BUCHAREST - Romania said on Friday it extended a European Union-imposed ban on international baby adoptions by another three months to June 1, because it needed more time to complete new child protection laws.
The moratorium has been repeatedly extended since 2001, when the European Union urged Bucharest to clean up a corrupt system if it wanted to join the wealthy bloc in 2007.
"The government approved a new extension, as foster care laws are not yet ready," a government spokeswoman told Reuters. The parliament resumed work in early February after the winter recess and it has yet to discuss and pass the laws, she added.
The ban left 3,500 foreign couples, mostly American, caught in the middle of the adoption process when it was imposed.
Would-be parents from the West rushed to adopt Romanian babies in the early 1990s, moved by harrowing television images of children living in filthy orphanages.
Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was ousted in 1989, banned birth control and abortion, flooding state institutions with an estimated 100,000 unwanted children.